(84a) Machine Learning in Industry: Lessons from the Past As We Look to the Future

Big Data, Machine Learning, AI are commonly used terms these days. They have much promise and have shown potential in several offline PoCs. But the real value of such applications comes from their ability to generalize to new data, provide relevant insights, and evaluate conditions in real time (online) within an industrial setting. Faulty or unreliable sensors, noise, unmeasured disturbances, varying feed and operating conditions, and a shortage of devoted manpower makes it challenging to design and maintain such technologies.

Model Predictive Control/Advanced Process Control (APC) is a technology that is similarly complex but has seen significant success in industry. Machine learning would do well to learn from some of the successes and follies in the evolution of APC in industry. In this talk, we will discuss how some of those learnt experiences from the past can be applied to build successful industrial machine learning systems. Select industrial applications are discussed. The talk concludes with a discussion on the impact of a practitioner friendly, maintainable, machine learning system on plants of tomorrow.